How to begin my career

[BlueTurtle]

Quote from PlinytheTrader:

Well I am sure your opinion and life experiences transpose perfectly onto every other individual's. Plus I highly doubt you have first hand knowledge and held all of those jobs you listed as being crap. From my experience there is no superior path and you can be happy with whatever life choices you make. I have spent time in private banking, business consulting, spent 3 years at a prop firm while in business school and also been a buy side analyst. They all had a lot of things to like in addition to many miserable elements but it is the same thing with trading. Even with the excitement and independence you get as an individual trader, at the end of the day you are still sitting at home by yourself with the internet as your only companion, and that gets pretty miserable as well.

I am never 100% serious....however, I have:

worked at a bank. horrible.
as a financial analyst. super boring. sheep
for a portfolio manager. good and bad days, he was emotional.
on an exchange. good to great to electronic took over....

of course it's impossible to generalize.

yes, you must find the balance of what you like.

if you like to exercise....the job must give you that time. if not, what is the point of it all?

in life.....nobody gets out alive.

so enjoy

 

[s0mmi]

In order to begin your career as a trader, you need to do the following things:

1. Read 'One Good Trade' by Mike Bella, This is the BIBLE of Prop trading.

I am a futures trader but even I needed to read this (it focuses on Equities but only in a broad sense)

2. Read 'Reminiscences of a Stock Operator'

You MUST, MUST read those two books.

The next thing you must do, is ask a trader questions about the industry.[/b] Luckily, Im one of those guys. You can ask me anything to do with trading and I'll gladly help. Ive been with a prop firm for 2 years and have found a lot of success. It took me 7-8 months to make money, but after that Im doing extremely well.

Trust me, if you read One Good Trade 90% of your questions will be answered. They even answer all the standard interview questions for you.

 

[NorthernLimit]

If you are interning at MS consider yourself damn lucky. You must have a solid GPA, so you should have enough brains to know that you will be given opportunities to prove yourself as a trader.

The reason professionals consider prop trading a non-starter is that try it at any time, it's an "open" opportunity that you can always pursue. When focusing on your career always go for those opportunities that are "closed" to entry when they are offered to you. Everybody wants to trade, but you may not be any good as a trader, you may be better as a salesman, or in research, also there are different kinds of trading, you may better suited for one over the other. You will be evaluated for these traits by someone at MS.

If you want to develop further as a professional you will need a pedigree. You should know this since you went to university in the first place. There is no degree in trading, but the best you can do is get licensed Series 3, 65, etc.; get a CFA; get an MBA at a recognized ivy league university; and learn some additional value-added skills such as a foreign language or programming in C. These things you can learn while you work at MS, and they will likely pay for once you are there full-time. Your first responsibility should be doing everything in your power to prove to anyone at MS who will evaluate you that you are worthy of full employment.

The things that will hold you back n your career will likely be personal responsibilities that are beyond your control, such as commitments to dependents; wife, children, aging parents. Those work/family decisions will be your toughest choices in life, so don't limit yourself now while you are young.

IMAO